Ukrainian wedding is not only the colorful and bright family holiday but also a ritual action which means revival and a new life of two people. Nowadays people have a lot of choices how to celebrate their wedding, but in ancient Ukraine there were a lot of regulations and customs which had to be considered during the wedding.
Songs were one of the most important things on the traditional Ukrainian wedding. Wedding songs accompanied and explained every stage of the celebration.
The traditional Ukrainian wedding was like a theatrical performance that’s why Ukrainian and Russian language still have the expression “to play a wedding” which means “to have a wedding”.
In Slavic wedding folklore there are five different types of song: cheering, condemnatory, lyrical songs, wails and sentences.
The cheering songs are one of the brightest genres. These songs had the magic origin and they helped people to believe in themselves. People in the 19th century and earlier got married without getting to know each other: parents of each side negotiated about a wedding so two people got married without even seeing each other. So these songs gave a Russian bride and groom the opportunity to know each other better.
The condemnatory songs had the symbolic meaning, because the relatives of a Russian bride were scared of whammy, so they told funny things about bride and groom and their relatives. Unlike the cheering songs they created a comic-satirical portrait of every person and made fun of human weakness. They helped a Russian bride and a groom to reduce stress because a good laugh is the shortest way to a man’s heart. 
The lyrical wedding songs gave people the opportunity to show what they felt for real. Wails and sentences were the traditional songs of a Russian bride and her family. As usual a single Russian woman had to get married very early, so she was scared to move from a parental home to a husband’s home. A Russian bride and her girlfriends were crying to show the fear. They were singing special songs which helped them to understand and accept the situation. These songs were very sad but nobody could change a situation and after a while a Russian bride had to marry an unknown man. By the way, nowadays a lot of Russian brides also live in their parental home before getting married, so the parents follow the tradition of “keeping” their daughter for her future husband. 
Today the wedding rules are different and a Russian bride knows her future husband before marriage and smile at her wedding. Modern songs replaced the traditional wedding wails and cheering songs, but still they are very popular at the ethnic festivals and at the traditional weddings.